Finish the orchestration of Israel in Trouble: IX. One Day Dinah and move right on to X. If It Be Thus -- a recapitulation of the opening movement, ending the piece. Stand-in visual again, this time The Rape of Lucretia, by Peter Paul Rubens (again -- what's his story with all the deflowerings, including yesterday's Sabine Women? -- and what about that Benjamin Britten opera?). The Alban Berg Wozzeck references seem pretty clear in IT: ODD, although no one picks them up in the salon this evening, which seems fine, and we have a fine time, pairing and quartetting up for improvisations, then works by Alexis Alrich, David Graves, Lisa Scola Prosek, Davide Verotta, plus Mice and Men: Act 5, Scene 2 Finale and the above.
Before this, dictation and harmonization are from Conrad Paumann's Mit Ganczem Willen (first system above), followed by competitive student compositions -- there's a little J.S. Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (in the for-better-or-worse Leopold Stokowski orchestration of Fantasia) presentation in there somewhere, spurring an animated discussion on composition and improvisation (we follow similar tacks in the salon).
There's time for a bit of recording in the lab of Dinah and the final movement, dealing with the birth of Benjamin and the death of Rachel (pictured above is a detail of aforesaid from the Vatican Secret Archives -- which are evidently not so clandestine these days, as they are apparently open to the public, according to the V website....), semetrically harkening back to the agony of Rebekkah in bearing Esau and Jacob (with again the opening of G.F. Handel's Israel in Egypt as tsource material). Far from this is the pleasure of a San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra board meeting, with aforementioned artistes, plus Rachel Condry, Michael Cooke, and Erling Wold. Sandwiched between is a run to Marin to check the post box and grade papers at Celia's.
